for any entrepreneur out there like you
can’t take no for an answer
you know we had really smart credible
people telling us know if you want to
get better play with people who are
better than you it will be Airbnb and I
think we were an overnight success and
that couldn’t be further from the truth
you need motivation watch a top 10
believe nation what’s up believe nation
at seven I believe in you and this
channel is designed to be part of your
daily success routine so let’s get your
motivation to attend and get you
believing in you grab a snack and chew
in today’s lessons from a man who went
from co-founding Airbnb with zero
investors and thousands of dollars in
credit card debt and having to sell
breakfast cereal to keep the company
alive to disrupting the hospitality
industry and being worth over three and
a half billion dollars he’s Joe Gebbia
and here’s my take on his top ten rules
okay let’s kick it off with rule number
one play with better players a
basketball coach in seventh grade gave
me advice that I’ve carried through my
entire life
if you want to get better play with
people who are better than you and since
that moment probably with anything I can
think of in my life I’ve always sought
to throw myself into situations where
I’m probably maybe one of the least
knowledgeable in the room or you know I
have the least amount of experience so I
did I started playing with upperclassmen
in regards to basketball at the YMCA and
at my high school at the time I was
always playing with guys who were taller
than me stronger than me had better
skills than I did and I feel like that
just being thrown into an experience
like that it sort of it forces kind of
sink or swim like it kind of forces you
and you have to find the self-reliance
inside of you just to stay with it yeah
to actually excel and get to the next
level rule number two
go through failures there’s a design
conference coming to San Francisco and
there’s not a single place to stay in
the city and I’m looking around the
apartment seeing all the space in her
living room thinking wait there’s all
this extra space what if we took an air
bed out of the closet we blew it up on
the floor and when we hosted guests who
needed a place to stay I call it Brian
said Brian we’re gonna throw air beds on
the floor we’re gonna host guests this
weekend we wants just in time for South
by Southwest and we had about 10 people
list their place in Austin in a total of
two reservations one of which was Brian
so we were not met with success it did
not take off like a rocket ship in fact
I would call it a miserable failure at
that point rule number three be
resourceful in the early days of
starting the company we didn’t have any
money we maxed out our credit cards
I’m co-founder Brian and I had about
$10,000 in credit card debt
each couldn’t produce you can use their
credit cards anymore there’s no limit
and so that led us to think of what
other ways we can make some money to
keep the company going and that led to a
very unusual idea which is to make
breakfast cereal and this is during the
time of the presidential elections in
the United States Barack Obama John
McCain they were like taking over
headlines nationwide worldwide baby and
we just had this crazy idea to make
breakfast cereal in the likeness of
Obama indicator so we call it Cat Cat
McCain’s and Obama O’s crawl and they
only made 500 of each box have a
beautiful design on the front like
really well really well designed and
each box was numbered one out of five
hundred 205 pounds very limited edition
and because it was such a collector’s
item we were able to charge some money
for it so yeah we ended up selling out
of the boxes and that’s how we’re going
with the company early on it renumber
for practice what role does this
practice play and being successful as
both an entrepreneur and I created this
is such a good topic because I feel like
there’s a such a parallel to practice in
sports and prepare yourself for the game
yeah when game time comes that there is
prepare yourself as an entrepreneur for
when the ideas present in front of you
for when the opportunity falls in front
of you it would be such a mistake I
think for people to think that you know
Airbnb we just woke up and there was the
idea what what people maybe don’t
realize is that Bryan was had his
entrepreneurial pursuits long before the
company and I was on this my own lineage
my own path of constantly trying things
out like being in the gym of
entrepreneurship and the majority things
that I tried you’ve never heard of right
the people watching right now I’ve never
heard of these things but that was okay
because it was like tuning of the muscle
that you see an opportunity in the world
and you’re ready to make something of it
like you’re ready to have like again
transition something from your head into
a sketchbook and out into the world and
the more that you can get in the habit
of that cycle air be like the
that Airbnb concept just happened to
come along in this this long lineage of
other ideas that didn’t go anywhere but
where exercises practice the batting
cage of entrepreneurship right so I feel
like you know one of the best lessons
that that I’ve learned is just
constantly be in that moment that act of
creation yeah even if it sucks even if
it doesn’t go anywhere even if nobody in
the world knows about it it’s like have
an idea get it down and bring it to life
you can throw it away after that the man
that muscle is so so important home rule
number five don’t take no for an answer
well we actually had 20 introductions to
investors throughout Silicon Valley ten
of those people were applied to her
email five of them Meadows for coffee
zero invested in Airbnb and talk about a
tough time you’ve got some of the
smartest people in the world you know
they’ve picked some of the most
well-known companies that we all love
them these today from Google’s and
PayPal’s and YouTube’s and here they are
telling us that our idea is crazy
that it’s not gonna scale that people
aren’t gonna stay in people’s homes
around the world kind of the world
thought we were crazy for any
entrepreneur out there like you can’t
take no for an answer
you know we had really smart credible
people telling us no and had we listened
to them there might not be Airbnb today
rule number six find your passion
every being I think we were an overnight
success and that couldn’t be further
from the truth it’s been a very long
haul to get to where we are today
three years is a very long time when
you’re working six or seven days it’ve
12 plus hours every day it actually
feels like a decade to me does it feel
like three years feels like years but my
advice to entrepreneurs would be you
have to have a uncanny amount of
persistence like almost to the point of
people call crazy like I think you get
persistence persistence comes from from
pursuing an idea that you’re like
incredibly passionate about it’s maybe
we should back up and it actually starts
with like are you passionate about the
idea and I think if you’re passionate
about your idea like nothing’s gonna
stop it rule number seven bring ideas to
life my first business was selling
drawings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
to my second-grade classmates for a
dollar or $2 if you wanted the big
version no way yeah and it was doing so
well that the parents of the students
were getting complaints because their
children were asking for extra lunch
money yeah
and so they complained to the teachers
they’re like why is my student asking
for extra lunch money and then they
traced it back to me and they shut the
business down you know just kind of
always was looking for opportunities to
start things you know whether it was the
drawings had a first a lawn mower
business I’m sure you know at some point
it was raised and then getting into high
school found all kinds of opportunities
to to bring ideas to life yeah so I feel
like that’s that’s my life story just
you know the gift of having an idea go
from a sketch book and to see it become
reality and there’s nothing nothing
greater than that rule number eight do
things that don’t scale we pull up the
twenty host and search results and we
realize something that the photography
the images of their listings are
actually not very good so we kind of
have this realization know we can solve
that problem we know how to take a good
photo but it’s not scalable that’s the
thing is that up until this point we had
tried to solve problems in a scalable
way which I think I would call like some
of the mythology of Silicon Valley is
that you have to solve problems in a
scalable way that one line of code has
to meet the needs of hundreds tens tens
of thousands or hundred thousand maybe
millions of people so Paul Graham comes
along and basically gives us this
which was the single greatest piece of
advice we ever got go meet your people
do things that don’t scale it’ll teach
you you’ll learn from it so we flied in
New York that weekend we rent a camera
with the wide-angle lens and we go from
door to door
throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn so
here we are in the environment of our
customers now watching them use our
product in real time and we’re seeing a
lot of things that we didn’t know or
problems we got so close that we got to
step into their shoes for a moment and
see the world through their eyes and
really see the pain points that they
were feeling and that to me is like
that’s the basics of innovation you take
a lightened empathetic point of view for
your customers you combine it with your
own unique point of view of the world to
create something new you know what
happened because of this they started
using the word love in the same sentence
as Airbnb they started telling their
neighbors their friends or family
members their co-workers and so two
things started to happen simultaneously
the amount of choice started to go up
and the quality of that choice went up
as well and when a new host came to the
site they said oh oh I guess I need to
have really nice photos to be in the
part of this marketplace and we started
to see the number of reservations go up
rule number nine storyboard like crazy
who here likes to go to the movies
okay who’s seen Star Wars but who hasn’t
seen Star Wars okay we have too good a
talk so I found the original script of
Star Wars this is an image of the script
this is where movies start they start in
written form in sequence so how do they
get from this to a cinematic 4d
experience
what’s the bridge that the story towing
industry has been using for the last 85
years to get from the written sequence
storyboards
storyboards bringing words to life
storyboards show you things that words
can’t and they help bridge words to
experience so every day Airbnb we face
the same challenge right we can theirs
experience is happening people are
checking into treehouses people are
cooking and sharing food with guests
from around the world and they’re even
housing each other after hurricanes so
how do we bridge from our script to
these real world experiences we
storyboard and we storyboard like crazy
last year we embarked on an ambitious
project to map the entire guest and host
journey on Airbnb and we did it through
illustration we looked at the key
emotional moments of the journey and we
drew them we visualized them and what
it’s done for us it allowed our entire
company to achieve a new level of
empathy with our customers these are all
the storyboards back in the office it’s
allowed us to align around a common
vision and rule number 10 the last one
before a very special bonus clip is
study success Charles and Ray Eames
there were a couple huh Charles was a
guy where I was the woman and they were
big in the 1950s 60s what they did she
has changed the way that I
can’t receive the world and they kind of
like a course correcting me to what I’m
doing today bring the best design to
most people for the least price give
their lives to creating design that
would cut last them right even today
long after they passed away Charles and
Ray Eames
and create the furniture and the objects
they created is considered some of the
best design that we’ve ever seen I’ve
got a special bonus cup from Joe on how
to create memorable experiences that I
really think you’re gonna enjoy but
before that it’s time for the three
point landing questions time to move
from just watching another video to
taking action in your life for business
and if you’re feeling bold leave your
answers in the comments below here we go
question number one which three
successful people will you commit to
studying number two what thing that
doesn’t scale do you need to do more of
and number three what idea of yours will
you commit to bringing to life under B
people get a very memorable experience
when you book a place that’s maybe in a
city has never been to
visited you actually get to embed
yourself into like the facts or the city
because you’re not staying in kind of
tourist sections of city and state and
he wants it you can book rooms and
places that are in like very local
neighborhoods so if you’re going to
Paris and you want to know it’s like to
live in Paris to be a Parisian you can
book and stay in the region you can go
to the local grocery store you can go to
their local cafe doesn’t that see the
local nightlife that a local Parisian
experiences you can really let yourself
if you like this video check out the one
I did on Joe’s partners Brian Chesky his
top 10 rules the link is right there
next to me I think you’ll enjoy it
continue to believe and I’ll see you
there
she said Brian startups died of suicide
not homicide all great companies that
had a downfall they died of self-inflicted wounds
can’t take no for an answer
you know we had really smart credible
people telling us know if you want to
get better play with people who are
better than you it will be Airbnb and I
think we were an overnight success and
that couldn’t be further from the truth
you need motivation watch a top 10
believe nation what’s up believe nation
at seven I believe in you and this
channel is designed to be part of your
daily success routine so let’s get your
motivation to attend and get you
believing in you grab a snack and chew
in today’s lessons from a man who went
from co-founding Airbnb with zero
investors and thousands of dollars in
credit card debt and having to sell
breakfast cereal to keep the company
alive to disrupting the hospitality
industry and being worth over three and
a half billion dollars he’s Joe Gebbia
and here’s my take on his top ten rules
okay let’s kick it off with rule number
one play with better players a
basketball coach in seventh grade gave
me advice that I’ve carried through my
entire life
if you want to get better play with
people who are better than you and since
that moment probably with anything I can
think of in my life I’ve always sought
to throw myself into situations where
I’m probably maybe one of the least
knowledgeable in the room or you know I
have the least amount of experience so I
did I started playing with upperclassmen
in regards to basketball at the YMCA and
at my high school at the time I was
always playing with guys who were taller
than me stronger than me had better
skills than I did and I feel like that
just being thrown into an experience
like that it sort of it forces kind of
sink or swim like it kind of forces you
and you have to find the self-reliance
inside of you just to stay with it yeah
to actually excel and get to the next
level rule number two
go through failures there’s a design
conference coming to San Francisco and
there’s not a single place to stay in
the city and I’m looking around the
apartment seeing all the space in her
living room thinking wait there’s all
this extra space what if we took an air
bed out of the closet we blew it up on
the floor and when we hosted guests who
needed a place to stay I call it Brian
said Brian we’re gonna throw air beds on
the floor we’re gonna host guests this
weekend we wants just in time for South
by Southwest and we had about 10 people
list their place in Austin in a total of
two reservations one of which was Brian
so we were not met with success it did
not take off like a rocket ship in fact
I would call it a miserable failure at
that point rule number three be
resourceful in the early days of
starting the company we didn’t have any
money we maxed out our credit cards
I’m co-founder Brian and I had about
$10,000 in credit card debt
each couldn’t produce you can use their
credit cards anymore there’s no limit
and so that led us to think of what
other ways we can make some money to
keep the company going and that led to a
very unusual idea which is to make
breakfast cereal and this is during the
time of the presidential elections in
the United States Barack Obama John
McCain they were like taking over
headlines nationwide worldwide baby and
we just had this crazy idea to make
breakfast cereal in the likeness of
Obama indicator so we call it Cat Cat
McCain’s and Obama O’s crawl and they
only made 500 of each box have a
beautiful design on the front like
really well really well designed and
each box was numbered one out of five
hundred 205 pounds very limited edition
and because it was such a collector’s
item we were able to charge some money
for it so yeah we ended up selling out
of the boxes and that’s how we’re going
with the company early on it renumber
for practice what role does this
practice play and being successful as
both an entrepreneur and I created this
is such a good topic because I feel like
there’s a such a parallel to practice in
sports and prepare yourself for the game
yeah when game time comes that there is
prepare yourself as an entrepreneur for
when the ideas present in front of you
for when the opportunity falls in front
of you it would be such a mistake I
think for people to think that you know
Airbnb we just woke up and there was the
idea what what people maybe don’t
realize is that Bryan was had his
entrepreneurial pursuits long before the
company and I was on this my own lineage
my own path of constantly trying things
out like being in the gym of
entrepreneurship and the majority things
that I tried you’ve never heard of right
the people watching right now I’ve never
heard of these things but that was okay
because it was like tuning of the muscle
that you see an opportunity in the world
and you’re ready to make something of it
like you’re ready to have like again
transition something from your head into
a sketchbook and out into the world and
the more that you can get in the habit
of that cycle air be like the
that Airbnb concept just happened to
come along in this this long lineage of
other ideas that didn’t go anywhere but
where exercises practice the batting
cage of entrepreneurship right so I feel
like you know one of the best lessons
that that I’ve learned is just
constantly be in that moment that act of
creation yeah even if it sucks even if
it doesn’t go anywhere even if nobody in
the world knows about it it’s like have
an idea get it down and bring it to life
you can throw it away after that the man
that muscle is so so important home rule
number five don’t take no for an answer
well we actually had 20 introductions to
investors throughout Silicon Valley ten
of those people were applied to her
email five of them Meadows for coffee
zero invested in Airbnb and talk about a
tough time you’ve got some of the
smartest people in the world you know
they’ve picked some of the most
well-known companies that we all love
them these today from Google’s and
PayPal’s and YouTube’s and here they are
telling us that our idea is crazy
that it’s not gonna scale that people
aren’t gonna stay in people’s homes
around the world kind of the world
thought we were crazy for any
entrepreneur out there like you can’t
take no for an answer
you know we had really smart credible
people telling us no and had we listened
to them there might not be Airbnb today
rule number six find your passion
every being I think we were an overnight
success and that couldn’t be further
from the truth it’s been a very long
haul to get to where we are today
three years is a very long time when
you’re working six or seven days it’ve
12 plus hours every day it actually
feels like a decade to me does it feel
like three years feels like years but my
advice to entrepreneurs would be you
have to have a uncanny amount of
persistence like almost to the point of
people call crazy like I think you get
persistence persistence comes from from
pursuing an idea that you’re like
incredibly passionate about it’s maybe
we should back up and it actually starts
with like are you passionate about the
idea and I think if you’re passionate
about your idea like nothing’s gonna
stop it rule number seven bring ideas to
life my first business was selling
drawings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
to my second-grade classmates for a
dollar or $2 if you wanted the big
version no way yeah and it was doing so
well that the parents of the students
were getting complaints because their
children were asking for extra lunch
money yeah
and so they complained to the teachers
they’re like why is my student asking
for extra lunch money and then they
traced it back to me and they shut the
business down you know just kind of
always was looking for opportunities to
start things you know whether it was the
drawings had a first a lawn mower
business I’m sure you know at some point
it was raised and then getting into high
school found all kinds of opportunities
to to bring ideas to life yeah so I feel
like that’s that’s my life story just
you know the gift of having an idea go
from a sketch book and to see it become
reality and there’s nothing nothing
greater than that rule number eight do
things that don’t scale we pull up the
twenty host and search results and we
realize something that the photography
the images of their listings are
actually not very good so we kind of
have this realization know we can solve
that problem we know how to take a good
photo but it’s not scalable that’s the
thing is that up until this point we had
tried to solve problems in a scalable
way which I think I would call like some
of the mythology of Silicon Valley is
that you have to solve problems in a
scalable way that one line of code has
to meet the needs of hundreds tens tens
of thousands or hundred thousand maybe
millions of people so Paul Graham comes
along and basically gives us this
which was the single greatest piece of
advice we ever got go meet your people
do things that don’t scale it’ll teach
you you’ll learn from it so we flied in
New York that weekend we rent a camera
with the wide-angle lens and we go from
door to door
throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn so
here we are in the environment of our
customers now watching them use our
product in real time and we’re seeing a
lot of things that we didn’t know or
problems we got so close that we got to
step into their shoes for a moment and
see the world through their eyes and
really see the pain points that they
were feeling and that to me is like
that’s the basics of innovation you take
a lightened empathetic point of view for
your customers you combine it with your
own unique point of view of the world to
create something new you know what
happened because of this they started
using the word love in the same sentence
as Airbnb they started telling their
neighbors their friends or family
members their co-workers and so two
things started to happen simultaneously
the amount of choice started to go up
and the quality of that choice went up
as well and when a new host came to the
site they said oh oh I guess I need to
have really nice photos to be in the
part of this marketplace and we started
to see the number of reservations go up
rule number nine storyboard like crazy
who here likes to go to the movies
okay who’s seen Star Wars but who hasn’t
seen Star Wars okay we have too good a
talk so I found the original script of
Star Wars this is an image of the script
this is where movies start they start in
written form in sequence so how do they
get from this to a cinematic 4d
experience
what’s the bridge that the story towing
industry has been using for the last 85
years to get from the written sequence
storyboards
storyboards bringing words to life
storyboards show you things that words
can’t and they help bridge words to
experience so every day Airbnb we face
the same challenge right we can theirs
experience is happening people are
checking into treehouses people are
cooking and sharing food with guests
from around the world and they’re even
housing each other after hurricanes so
how do we bridge from our script to
these real world experiences we
storyboard and we storyboard like crazy
last year we embarked on an ambitious
project to map the entire guest and host
journey on Airbnb and we did it through
illustration we looked at the key
emotional moments of the journey and we
drew them we visualized them and what
it’s done for us it allowed our entire
company to achieve a new level of
empathy with our customers these are all
the storyboards back in the office it’s
allowed us to align around a common
vision and rule number 10 the last one
before a very special bonus clip is
study success Charles and Ray Eames
there were a couple huh Charles was a
guy where I was the woman and they were
big in the 1950s 60s what they did she
has changed the way that I
can’t receive the world and they kind of
like a course correcting me to what I’m
doing today bring the best design to
most people for the least price give
their lives to creating design that
would cut last them right even today
long after they passed away Charles and
Ray Eames
and create the furniture and the objects
they created is considered some of the
best design that we’ve ever seen I’ve
got a special bonus cup from Joe on how
to create memorable experiences that I
really think you’re gonna enjoy but
before that it’s time for the three
point landing questions time to move
from just watching another video to
taking action in your life for business
and if you’re feeling bold leave your
answers in the comments below here we go
question number one which three
successful people will you commit to
studying number two what thing that
doesn’t scale do you need to do more of
and number three what idea of yours will
you commit to bringing to life under B
people get a very memorable experience
when you book a place that’s maybe in a
city has never been to
visited you actually get to embed
yourself into like the facts or the city
because you’re not staying in kind of
tourist sections of city and state and
he wants it you can book rooms and
places that are in like very local
neighborhoods so if you’re going to
Paris and you want to know it’s like to
live in Paris to be a Parisian you can
book and stay in the region you can go
to the local grocery store you can go to
their local cafe doesn’t that see the
local nightlife that a local Parisian
experiences you can really let yourself
if you like this video check out the one
I did on Joe’s partners Brian Chesky his
top 10 rules the link is right there
next to me I think you’ll enjoy it
continue to believe and I’ll see you
there
she said Brian startups died of suicide
not homicide all great companies that
had a downfall they died of self-inflicted wounds
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